Chapter 348: O Dragon, O Dragon! Part Thirteen
Sunraku: “Nope, nope, nope, nope!”
This was impossible.
It was not a question of whether Scarred was here or not. We simply needed more bodies.
I made a Hollywood-worthy leap, and a bull’s head slammed down onto the spot where I had been only seconds earlier.
I looked toward Scarred. It was being pecked by an eagle’s beak, raked by a lion’s paw... basically getting mobbed from every direction while roaring in pain.
Wasn’t something wrong with this picture? We had the numerical advantage. There was only one Great Red Devourer...!
Deep Throater: “Sooorry to keep you waaaiting.”
Tottori: “Wh—what the hell is that...?”
Emul: “Sunraku-saaaan!!”
Damn it. Retreat was the only option here.
I’m counting on you, Scarred. I plan on coming back as fast as I can, so don’t you dare die on me... okay?
I disengaged with Mirror of Fading, then shouted toward Tottori, Deep Throater, and the others as they came running toward me.
Sunraku: “Information exchange!!”
Tottori: “Huh? Ah, um...”
Deep Throater: “Looks like defeating a certain number of them was the trigger. Something got away from us while we were in the middle of... that, so we regrouped and came over here...”
So I had been right.
I had considered the possibility that this phase triggered when the boss fell below a certain amount of HP, but even with all-out support for that three-headed dinosaur, I had never gotten the sense that we had pushed it that far.
That made it more natural to assume the blood-crystal side was the flag. And judging from what had happened, that was probably correct.
Sunraku: “Uh... anyway, attacks—monsters—get generated out of that red tornado. And the main body doesn’t even need to perform an attack animation.”
I had learned that part personally and painfully.
I had no idea whether that red tornado was made from a huge mass of insects or something else, though the closer you got, the louder the beating of wings became. What I did know was that all kinds of monsters could emerge from it.
There did not seem to be any limit to their number. They returned to the tornado after a certain amount of time, so there was no real benefit to killing them, and on top of that their performance seemed unchanged from when they were alive.
Probably.
Tottori: “So basically... the monster can just spam something like summoning magic?”
Sunraku: “Pretty much. And the main body doesn’t need to perform any particular action to do it.”
Tottori: “...Ha.”
A dry laugh escaped Tottori.
Of course it did. Motion-canceling would be busted even in PvP, and now, of all things, a raid monster was effectively doing it.
Deep Throater: “...Sooo? Got any path to victory, Sunraku-kuuun?”
Sunraku: “Path to victory or not, we’ve got no choice but to have us players and Scarred pound on the main body. Or... Emul. The tornado.”
Emul: “Hai na!”
A Magic Edge crashed into the red tornado and bloomed into a damage effect.
After a brief silence, the tornado clearly began moving as though it were about to generate something in our direction, so we hurriedly pulled back.
The next instant, only an ape’s arm launched at the spot where we had been and smashed into the ground with a thunderous crash.
Sunraku: “What is this, a rocket punch?”
Deep Throater: “Looks like it can make individual body parts toooo... which means—”
Shhk.
Areadbhair came out.
The pervert shut up.
Skipping dialogue is important sometimes.
Deep Throater: “But now we know one thing...”
Sunraku: “What?”
Deep Throater: “If an attack is meaningless... there’s no need to counterattack.”
...Right. That made sense.
At the very least, the odds were high that the red tornado was not an invincible object.
If it truly were invincible, there would be little reason for it to react when attacked. All it would have to do was spread out and we would be finished.
Of course, there was still a possibility it had simply been programmed to react like that despite actually being invincible... but I really did not want to believe a raid monster had been given a straight-up invulnerability mechanic.
Sunraku: “By the way, Tottori. Got anything that’d be especially effective against that tornado?”
Tottori: “I mean, technically... but I don’t have Deep Throater’s firepower, and I don’t have many shots, so don’t expect too much.”
Sunraku: “Same here, so don’t worry about it. I’ve got some big firepower, but now that I think about it, most of it’s for single targets...”
Sure, we could just aim at the main body.
But even if I somehow sprinted all the way to the base of that tornado without taking a scratch, what would be waiting for me at the finish line was that shitty beam-spamming pseudo five-headed dragon.
Honestly, I was starting to get bored.
Or rather, because this whole encounter had started as a surprise attack, my motivation had never really climbed as high as it should have.
It was still sitting at a pretty high level, sure—but it had not broken through the limit. It felt like driving a car while faithfully obeying the speed limit.
Sunraku: “I need something that makes me just... stomp the accelerator through the floor...”
Unidentified party member: “The accelerator...?”
When Rei-shi and I challenged Lycagon, that had been a surprise attack too, but I had history with Lycagon. That was why I had been able to get fired up.
Deep Throater: “Sunraku-kun, Scarred is doing something pretty crazy over there.”
Sunraku: “Huh?”
The three-headed Scarred was already in a state that could fairly be called completely battered.
Flesh had been pecked away all over its body, slashed open, even bitten off. The damage effects spraying from it were already threatening to push it right up to the edge of a fatal wound.
One of its heads—the tyrannosaur head on the far right—seemed to have had an eye crushed. Yet even as damage effects poured from the wound like flame, its muscles and fibers swelled with tension. The sight conveyed pain as strongly as it did terror.
But to Scarred, that probably was not something to recoil from.
The three heads roared, as though proudly displaying the meaning of every wound carved into its body.
The three heads roared, turning those wounds into even greater strength.
The three heads roared, declaring to the enemies threatening its life that it would still be the one to win.
Scarred: “GORURUOOOAAAAAAAAAAAA!!”
In this game, damage effects were basically displayed in red.
Even if you slashed a monster that very obviously did not have red blood, you still got a red effect, which could feel vaguely off sometimes.
And precisely because red was the default, the change forced us to understand what was happening all the more vividly.
Tottori: “The damage effects... turned black?”
Deep Throater: “...I’ve heard about this. Apparently when Team 10PM pushed it to the brink, it entered the same state... and once Scarred got like that, they couldn’t do a thing to it.”
Sunraku: “Wait, what? That thing gets stronger when its HP drops?”
So I had been the one holding it back.
Scarred charged forward, pitch-black effects erupting from all across its body. Every roar, every step, every movement sent violent tremors through the surroundings.
It was a brutally straightforward rush.
The Great Red Devourer met that charge without displaying anything resembling emotion, responding with the same mechanical indifference as ever.
In other words, it generated multiple monsters from the red tornado, surrounded Scarred alone, and prepared to make absolutely certain it died—
Erina, Hesh & Emul: “Eek!”
Sunraku, Tottori & Deep Throater: “Whaaat...?”
The first reaction came from Coward Number One, Erina; Coward Number Two, Hesh; and Coward Number Three, Emul.
The second came from me, Tottori, and Deep Throater.
After all, Scarred had just shown us something so ridiculous that Emul—who had been getting a little cocky lately—turned right back into a cowardly rabbit, while the player group was left speechless.
The beak of a two-headed eagle was shattered.
The horns of a bull generated as nothing but a head were snapped off.
The fingers of an ape generated as nothing but an arm were twisted out of shape.
And one of the Great Red Devourer’s own necks had been bitten clean off by Scarred.
...Holy shit, that thing is strong.
Sunraku: “What the hell is that natural armor? Its VIT is completely busted.”
Deep Throater: “It’s black, it’s hard, and I’m pretty sure its STR shoots up toooo...”
Well, one of the monsters generated from the red tornado had been pulverized by what amounted to nothing more than Scarred shifting its body.
So it clearly was not just getting tougher.
Wait. We’re supposed to be able to kill that thing?
Seriously?
The possibilities I could think of were that the state did not last very long, or that there was some kind of trick for shaving it down... Hold on. Wrong problem.
Sunraku: “All right. Scarred-kun is giving us the maximum meat-shield performance over there. Let’s get in on this.”
Tottori: “Got it! Elves, stay on support! Even just drawing the attention of the monsters coming out of that red tornado will help!”
For better or worse, Tottori had the whole hero thing going for him and committed fully to the mood of the moment.
He rallied the elves and ran forward to support Scarred. I tightened my grip on Areadbhair and prepared to follow the archer—
Deep Throater: “Hey, Sunraku-kuuun... can we have a little taalk...?”
Sunraku: “...What? Don’t kill my momentum right as I’m getting started.”
Deep Throater: “Come on, come on. It’s a very important conversation, and it won’t take long...”
Honestly, I could have ignored them.
But we had at least been traveling in the same party this whole time. For that much, I could hear them out.
Sunraku: “...Well?”
I prompted them to continue.
Deep Throater smiled at me.
It was not the smile of someone delighted to bombard me with dirty jokes.
It was not a smile adjusted to whichever character they happened to be playing at the moment.
It was the same final smile I had seen that day, right before the service shut down—the smile of Nutcracker.
Deep Throater: “—You’re not having fun right now, are you?”